• Royal House The King supports the Petro peace process and claims "a relationship of brotherhood and mutual respect"
  • Foreign Petro accepts the order of Isabel the Catholic after criticizing the "Spanish yoke"

Gustavo Petro's visit to Spain will be the only state visit in Spain during 2023. "It is the best indicator of the relevance that our country gives to Colombia," said Pedro Sánchez, after the meeting with the Colombian president in La Moncloa. "A very important stage is opening to strengthen ties." An appointment that has served to sign a dozen agreements, try to increase the economic relationship, the commitment to renewable energies and in which Petro has defended the struggle of Colombia, of Latin America, against the "Spanish yoke": "I do not think there are defenders of this type of yokes, who want us to return to the era of serfs and slaves".

Petro has been in Spain since Tuesday, May 2. A visit at the highest level, which in addition to a meeting at the Royal Palace with the Kings, and gala dinner, has included an intervention by him in the Congress of Deputies. In La Moncloa, he has held a one-hour meeting with Sánchez. In the subsequent appearance before the media, where only one question time per country has been allowed -the usual until now were two-, the Colombian president has exposed his reflection on the statements he made the day before landing in Spain, in which he affirmed that the Colombian people fought to get rid of the "Spanish yoke".

"I don't see a problem in saying it"

Petro has shielded himself in that both in America and in Europe there have been revolutions, struggles, to achieve freedom. "In high school, in history classes, we were generally taught that feudalism was a system of domination. That people were even separated into classes: serfs and slaves versus feudal lords. That was a society of yoke, that's why the peoples rose up," the Colombian president reflected. In his argument he has appealed to what happened in Europe centuries ago to support his theory: "The peasant wars in Europe were an attempt to liberate the peasantry of that time."

He has even pointed to Spain as an example of these struggles to free themselves from certain yokes, trying to minimize his criticism, although without specifying examples: "Spain has shown some beautiful passages in history of attempts by peoples to free themselves from the yoke. So do we." And he added: "I don't see it as problematic to say it, because there were people, thoughts, revolutions here and there that freed us from the feudal yoke."

  • Europe
  • Colombia
  • America
  • Congress of Deputies
  • Gustavo Petro
  • Pedro Sanchez

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